Journal "Contemporanea. Rivista di storia dell’800 e del 900"

Call for papers for a special issue of Contemporanea. Rivista di storia dell’800 e del ’900

The clothing of politics : dress, appearances and political identities (XIXth-XXth centuries)

Résumé

Fashion and clothing, a crucial aspect of social life, has aroused strong interest in recent years in many different fields of the social and human sciences. After a long period of neglect, many historians have begun to develop new approaches to the experience of dress as a situated bodily practice and as a form of language, always allusive and polysemic. The special issue of Contemporanea aims to engage in a reflection on the relationship between clothing and politics in the widest sense of the term, analyzing how “appearances” can express, perform and negotiate political, ideological, and national identities.

Argument
Fashion and clothing, a crucial aspect of social life, has aroused strong interest in recent years in many different fields of the social and human sciences. After a long period of neglect, many historians have begun to develop new approaches to the experience of dress as a situated bodily practice and as a form of language, always allusive and polysemic.

If the social world is a world of dressed bodies and dress a basic element of everyday life, clothing can by the same token tell us much about the ways in which bodies are shaped by culture and made meaningful. This may also relate to the field of politics, whose symbolic and performative aspects have now been extensively studied. Exploring the political dimension of dress, or the significance of dress in different political contexts, entails an investigation into the capacity of clothes and fashion to convey or to mobilize political meanings. In other terms, it entails asking how clothing can be viewed as an active object within a political culture.

The special issue of Contemporanea aims to engage in a reflection on the relationship between clothing and politics in the widest sense of the term, analyzing how “appearances” can express, perform and negotiate political, ideological, and national identities.

Main themes
In particular, Contemporanea would welcome proposals focusing on :

Dress as a site of political struggle and mobilization
Gender, clothing and citizenship
Dress as a component of a national agenda
The political meanings of fashion (and fashion discourses) in totalitarian regimes
Clothing, politics and consumer culture
Fashion and empire
Race, ethnicity and dress
The clothing industry and politics

Submission guidelines
The proposals (around 500 words) accompanied by a brief CV should be sent byJanuary 30, 2016

to the editor Carlotta Sorba (carlotta.sorba@unipd.it) along with a CC to the editorial secretary (contemporanea@mulino.it). The essays selected have to be submitted in their final form by June 30, 2016 ; all manuscripts will be refereed through a peer-review process (double blind). The special issue will be published by Summer 2017.